‘Conan: Black Colossus’ – Truman. Giorello & Villarrubia (Dark Horse Books)

Before anyone asks... Nope, I still haven’t read Howard’s original works. Not yet. I will get there but his detailed essay on his world ‘post Atlantis’ and ‘pre-Conan’ totally stumped me and I had to put the book down and take a walk. I will get there though, one day, maybe...
In the meantime though, I’ve found the ‘Conan’ comic books (from Dark Horse) to do a more than admirable job of presenting Howard’s tales, even if a few liberties are taken and they’re not exactly the ‘real thing’. Such a good job has been done, in fact, that I’ve found myself picking up a number of the trades to plug in the gaps in my comic reading where things like bills took precedence and I had to miss out a few issues here and there. What you’ll see here then isn’t so much a review of the adaptation of ‘Black Colossus’ as it is (hopefully) a few more newish comments about bits that I missed the first time round. What? I’ve just got back from holiday; give me a chance to get back into it...

Natohk, the ‘veiled one’, has gathered an army from amongst the desert tribes and marches on the Hyborian nations. All that stands in his way is the tiny kingdom of Khoraja where the god Mitra has told Princess Yasmela to hand control of her armies over to the first man she meets if she is to stand any chance of defeating Natohk. Guess who just happens to have been in a fight and is walking home drunk...?
Before he knows it, Conan is at the head of an army which will meet the prophet’s horde at Shamla Pass for a battle that could determine the fate of the Hyborian nations. Whatever the outcome, there’s one more fight to follow...

I don’t really want to rehash everything that I said back in 2009 so have a click Here if you’re interested in all that. What I’ll quite happily rehash though is how superb Giorello’s artwork really is. Seriously, it is. I’ve read a few Conan comics now and I don’t think anyone has really captured Conan, and the landscape that he strides across, in the same way that Giorello does. Here, Conan displays the arrogance and total belief in his abilities that we’ve all come to expect. What we also see though are little hints of humanity that suggest something a little deeper in his character. The landscape is appropriately rugged as well and gives some credence to all that masculinity that we see on display. This is an unforgiving country and you have to be right on top of your game to stand any chance of survival at all. All that muscle is there for a very good reason...

The trade paperback collection shows us that all the good things I said about Truman and Giorello’s work wasn’t just confined to those four issues that I picked up a couple of years ago; it stretches right across the whole storyline and does real justice to Howard’s original story, at least in my opinion. What I really enjoyed though were the moments where Truman and Giorello took small steps outside the original text and attempted to give us a wider picture of Conan’s world (I read ‘Black Colossus’ probably about ten years ago now so have some basis for comparison). I guess I’m really talking about how Conan came to join Amalric’s mercenary regiment and the series of bitter little wars that eventually led to them taking up service with Yasmela and also sets the scene for future stories in the life of Conan. They are very little touches, and the main body of the story is kept intact, but it’s a great way of fleshing out Conan’s world and it’s handled very well indeed.

I probably won’t be reading much more of Conan from Dark Horse as I don’t like the look of their current series ‘The Road of Kings’ (the artwork rather than the story, too cartoonish for my taste). There’s one more trade that I want to pick up but ‘Black Colossus’ is a great place to start winding things down...